The Most Underrated Performance Tool: Sleep
Sleep is the highest ROI habit in health.
One extra hour can boost focus, regulate hormones, and even improve training outcomes.
Here’s how to start improving your sleep tonight — and what happens when you don’t.
Most people I work with have an understanding or a desire to improve either their sleep quality or the amount of sleep they get, but struggle to effectively make a change. Like I mentioned in my previous post on Nutrition, awareness is the key first step. Start a sleep log - paper, electronic, or via an app, doesn't matter at this stage, and start to look for trends to target. But, something you can start tonight that will make a difference and build towards better sleep hygiene - before you try to go to sleep, take 5 minutes for the following:
Put your phone/tablet/laptop down for the night
Focus on your breathing, taking deep controlled breaths
Reflect on your day, focus on the good things of the day to help calm the nervous system and relax
Think about 1 thing you want to do tomorrow. This isn't about creating your to-do list, or run through your calendar, but 1 tangible thing you want to do better tomorrow. Maybe this is walking more during the day, taking the stairs, drinking more water, picking fruit for a snack and not the candy, or whatever small tangible step seems plausible to accomplish. And then check in on your progress with that the next night.
What does this 5 minutes get you? It starts you on the path to establishing a night time ritual that you can build on that doesn't have to be overly complex. It simply needs to be a series of things you do (ideally around the same time each night) that helps you signal your body that it is time to sleep. As you progress on the journey towards better sleep, there are lots of other things you can look to change, but for now, start small and build momentum. Another simple (not necessarily easy though) step to take that you can implement immediately, start reframing sleep from something you need to do to prevent the negative impacts, towards an attitude that embraces the restorative and supercharging benefits more productive sleep provides.
I know many live by the "I'll sleep when I'm dead" mantra, and I lived that way for a while too, but at some point that lack of sleep will come back around. Lack of sleep is one of the biggest stressors you can subject your body to, so it will dramatically limit your ability to perform as well as fight off any illnesses or injuries. The mental impact sometimes is hard to recognize as so often we've gotten used to the feelings and don't really appreciate it until we start getting CONSISTENT good sleep. Also it is hard to compare the impact on our body as there isn't a great way to quantitatively compare what it could be if we were getting better sleep. Some wearables can help address this and provide some insights, I personally have been using Whoop for almost 5 years now and have a pretty good feel how impactful sleep is on my mental and physical performance. However, there are numerous studies that look at exactly that - the dramatic impacts poor sleep has on your mental performance and capacity, as well as your physical performance. Physically it is even more damaging as the lack of sleep not only diminishes your performance but it will also prevent you from absorbing the same amount of your training such that you see reduced gains from your daily (or however frequently you work out) efforts. I could go on talking about the negative aspects, but honestly that list is VERY long!
Not only will you see the opposite of the above problems when you start getting consistently solid sleep, but you will also start to notice long term trends as well. The big health metrics - things like body fat percentage, blood pressure, and metabolism will all trend better as you work on your sleep quality. This is not only due to the short term impacts, but while we sleep the body has the opportunity to recover and repair itself. This recovery and repairing then compounds with your training load to create a very powerful healthy stress, recover, and adapt cycle that allows your brain and body to best leverage the hard work you're doing.
To summarize the last two paragraphs simply - progressing towards healthier sleep is the single best way to supercharge your tomorrow. It is one of the harder changes to make, but the benefits can be life changing.
Sleep is the foundation — not the reward — for your hard work.
You don’t earn it after performing; you build everything from it.
Small changes tonight can create measurable improvements in your energy, focus, and recovery tomorrow.
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